


vineyards are so nineteenth-century

by cannonarchy



Series: the super fun high school au [1]
Category: Frühlings Erwachen | Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Melchiorshaming, emotions rendered in exclamation points, ernst is trying to cope with everything in his life going to shit very quickly, hanschen is a terrible private school boy, it means no worries for the rest of your days, “hate everybody and take advantage of society” what a wonderful phrase
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 09:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5580634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannonarchy/pseuds/cannonarchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘Listen,’ Hanschen says. ‘There’s exactly three paths through life. Moritz took everything too seriously and got himself trampled by the status quo. Maybe it was his Latin pronunciation, maybe it was the non-regulation height of his hair, I don’t know, but he fucked up, there. Gabor read an Intro to Philosophy textbook and some Reddit posts and decided to stick it to the man, and, you know, got expelled and sent to the psych ward.’<br/>‘Therapeutic boarding school.’<br/>‘For troubled children? That’s a fucking psych ward. A real school for fucked-up kids would be a direct pipe to juvie, and his mother’s too rich. Which brings us to me.’<br/>‘To you,’ Ernst says.<br/>‘The winning team.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	vineyards are so nineteenth-century

**Author's Note:**

> this has probably been done before but fuck it my version is probably darker!!  
> this is in part based on the play, with a number of lines being direct modernisations of lines from that (“lighten up” is my version of “don’t let us be sad”), and also hanschen’s backstory is based on a line of melchior’s about one Max von Trenk, but the characterisation is mostly musical-based. so u can read it without knowing wedekind!  
> did you know it’s really difficult to try and keep hanschen’s ~lyricism~ intact while also making him A Teen who would feasibly say “it’s like, just kiss some ass, man”? i ended up losing most of the lyricism. oh well.

Hanschen can’t stand the view here. It’s like a parody of the sort of generic postcard you get from a relative who doesn’t know you well- rolling hills, dark clusters of trees, fences which line the countryside like hairline fractures. There’s something flat and distanced about it which makes one distrustful of whether they are looking out at the world or at a cardboard cutout. But that’s exactly the kind of cheesy bullshit that Ernst loves. 

The view, at least, seems to be having the intended effect on him. That’s what Hanschen figured would happen- although he didn’t exactly spend an enormous amount of time planning the exact details when up till the Moritz _complication_ his plan had been “pull him into an abandoned classroom one day and present a choice of desk or wall”. Not even his father could have talked him out of that one if Ernst had turned out to be less gay than Hanschen thought, so he’s bided his time, but the boy is so deep in the closet he suspects it will take some kind of major effort to extract him, a goddamn SWAT rescue mission of seduction, and Hanschen can’t take any more weeks of “accidental” physical contact and thinly-veiled references to homoerotic literature he isn’t even sure Ernst has read. 

Also- he admits- he is more comfortable seeing Ernst happy even after Moritz. Whatever deity rules over the universe and has such an intense rivalry with Gabor has no right to make Ernst Robel look like he has since the day of the funeral. 

Still, no matter how he reasons it out, he is now sitting here, in a playground, with a set of large coloured beads which slide back and forth on poles to their right, and their legs dangling off an edge from which a fireman’s pole can be accessed, and this is a less than ideal position to be in. Hanschen mourns the modern world’s lack of romance, or at least the modern world’s lack of appropriately classy spaces to discreetly fuck a cute Catholic boy.

‘So you used to play here,’ he says. ‘ _Here,_ this exact spot.’ 

‘Anna and Moritz and I used to play house down there,’ he says, gesturing to some kind of shitty plastic enclave down the shitty plastic steps. Hanschen pretends to look. Ernst surveys it fondly, barely seeing the walls themselves for the memories that cloud all thick around it. That was a time, he thinks, when things made sense. ’There used to be this sort of egg-shaped thing you climbed in to spin around in, but they took it down... Ilse used to spin around until she threw up.’ 

‘Perhaps that’s why they took it down,’ Hanschen says. ‘Reckless endangerment to minors.’ 

‘I never went in it,’ Ernst admits. ‘It was scary.’ 

‘And that’s why _you’re_ finishing school and _she’s_ pimping herself out to photographers.’ Ernst has this uncomfortable look on his face; it’s the one that arises whenever Hanschen says something even slightly cruel about one of his friends, which he does often, mostly for the sake of Hanschen Rilow Brand maintenance. Hanschen ignores his discomfort just as Ernst is willing to ignore his remarks. A perfect microcosm of polite society, he thinks, then dismisses the thought as Gabor-style pretentiousness. 

Ernst’s gaze has moved to the skyline, the hills, the sheep as serene as priests. ‘It’s beautiful out here,’ he says, quietly. 

‘Yeah.’ He can almost see what he means, if he looks closer; there’s the beginnings of sunset, stirring red and pink across the clouds and tall shadows of the trees, and casting everything into rosy-gold glory. The old church, dignified and weathered, stands tall as a sentinel amidst the crumples of hills and bushes. It gave its bell-cries as they arrived, low and mournful. Utterly peaceful. A view that poets wrote about, in the old days before they got all postmodern and shit.

‘I always think about the future on days like this,’ Ernst says. Hanschen gets the sense that he is not speaking _to_ him as much as he is _speaking-_ like he doesn’t give a damn if he hears or not, but it has to be said. ‘I’d love to be a pastor in a church like that- I mean, the old countryside. The river, the school nearby. And get married and live in some cottage close by, someplace small, but with a garden, a library, and dogs... an apple tree maybe. A fireplace.’ He’s smiling as though filled with nostalgia for something that hasn’t happened yet. ‘Can you imagine anything better?’ 

‘Half-closed eyes,’ Hanschen says. ‘Half-open lips. And Turkish draperies.’ 

Ernst, who Hanschen cannot quite believe did not notice his moving steadily closer, leaps away impressively. ‘What?’ he says, somehow managing to bring several stutters into one syllable. 

‘I mean, jesus christ,’ Hanschen says, ‘you talk like you swallowed an entire bushel of Enid Blyton books.’ 

Ernst guesses that from his tone he does not quite realise how this wounds him, but he can't repress the sting reeling in him. ‘I’m serious,’ he says, trying and failing not to sound petulant. 

‘Oh, I know,’ Hanschen says. ‘Really, Ernst, you are such a sentimentalist it’s embarrassing to behold. And, fuck, I have never met such a _middle-aged teenager.’_

He’s actually laughing- for once. Ernst fights a battle between being offended and being utterly charmed, and loses. 

‘Listen,’ Hanschen says. ‘There’s exactly three paths through life. Moritz took everything far too seriously and got himself trampled by the status quo. Maybe it was his Latin pronunciation, maybe it was the non-regulation height of his hair, I don’t know, but he fucked up, there. _Gabor_ read an Intro to Philosophy textbook and some Reddit posts and decided to stick it to the man, and, you know, got expelled and set to the psych ward.’ 

‘ _Therapeutic boarding school,’_ Ernst says quickly. He still looks troubled by what Hanschen said about Moritz, and honestly, he’s been dead for _weeks_ , or at least a week and a half or something, it’s not like they’re fucking on his coffin, although if that’s what it would have taken for Anna and Thea to consummate their enormous sexual tension Hanschen would happily donate his resting place to the cause.

‘For _troubled children?_ That’s a fucking psych ward. A real school for fucked-up kids would be a direct pipe to juvie, and his mother’s too rich. Which brings us to me.’ 

‘To you,’ Ernst says. 

‘The winning team,’ Hanschen says. ‘The system doesn’t beat me because I don’t _disturb_ it. I make it work for me.’ 

Ernst does not look convinced. 

‘If it helps...’ Hanschen says. ‘Think of the future as, like, a milkshake. Some men work hard to churn the, like, the milk-‘ 

‘Who’s that?’ Ernst says.

Metaphor consistency: not one of Hanschen’s strongest points. ‘Otto,’ he says, hoping that their classmate’s utter lack of defining features other than the Oedipus complex will pass this improvisation through. ‘And others just _spill_ it, and cry all night, and then have to awkwardly explain the stained sheets to their mother in the morning.’ 

He pauses. 

‘That one’s Georg.’ 

‘I got that.’ 

‘Right. But _me...’_

Ernst is suddenly terribly conscious of how close Hanschen is moving to him. 

He thinks _I cannot do this. Not right now._

He thinks of running, making an excuse and leaving, but-

He would be _alone,_ alone again, and numb again, and Hanschen-

Hanschen could go and tell the whole world that Ernst Robel is a fag (he must _know,_ he has to know, _how does he know)_ or they could never say another word to each other, both keenly, sharply aware of the damage that a single glance (an acknowledgment) could cause-

God, what’s worse?

‘I just skim the cream off the top.’ 

He has to stay. 

Hanschen looks over at Ernst. He is silent, completely silent. 

‘...and that’s something called a metaphor, Ernst.’ He says it in his condescending, expansive rich-boy tone, the one he knows will irritate him. ‘You’d know that if you were passing English.’ 

‘I know what a metaphor is,’ Ernst says. ‘Yours are just confusing.’ 

Hanschen says ‘You really need to lighten up.’ Ernst tenses at Hanschen’s hand on his arm, but he doesn’t move. ‘Honestly. It’s a beautiful night, we’re corrupting this playground with our insidious teenage presence, and thirty years from now if you stop being such a _Puritan_ we can look back upon our reckless teen years and chuckle fondly.’

Ernst is quiet for a moment. Then he points out, ‘I passed English class.’ 

‘So you did,’ Hanschen says. 

‘But Moritz didn’t.’ 

Hanschen’s exemplary self-control faces its greatest challenge: not rolling his eyes when he really, very badly wants to. ‘You’re thinking about _that_ again?’ 

‘I _know_ the last place was between the two of us,’ he says. ‘You even _said,_ that if I got through, he couldn’t have as well.’

‘Listen, between the trailer-trash father who beat him up, his rapist best friend who probably fucked him when he wasn’t single-handedly keeping Planned Parenthood open, and the academy’s devotion to upholding their Oxbridge graduate rate, I believe that exactly none of the blame falls to you.’ 

‘Trailer trash?’ Ernst says coldly. ‘Before Moritz killed himself you were complaining that the academy just let in whatever country club assholes slapped down the entrance fee.’ 

Hanschen is, despite himself, impressed that Ernst has remembered his exact words. He hopes he doesn’t remember that his next were _It’s like, just ship the retard off to special school in the countryside and buy a blowjob to cheer you up with the money you save, nobody but you_ gives _a fuck._ ‘Well, they’re new money,’ he says. ‘He was probably born in a trailer.’ 

Ernst _knows_ that he says offensive things as some kind of defence mechanism, he knows it, but that doesn’t make it any less infuriating. Sometimes he can’t tell if Hanschen is just too scared to show any real emotion or if he doesn’t _recognise_ that he has any. ‘I don’t care.’ 

‘He killed himself over _secondary school,_ anyway,’ Hanschen remarks. ’He’s never even had a job. You think he could have handled university? I hear they don’t even let you take medication. They just take the sharp objects out of your room and hope for the best.’ 

‘It’s not funny,’ Ernst says.

‘What the fuck do you want me to say?’ Hanschen says. ‘Oh, yes, Ernst, let’s all just stop our lives for a little while and be sad and sorry that it’s _all our fault._ That’s _productive._ That’s healthy.’ 

‘Have you _ever_ had anyone you care about die?’ Ernst asks him furiously. ‘Do you have _any idea_ what that’s like?’ 

‘Yes,’ Hanschen says. ‘And yes. And, you know what, nobody cared _then,_ either. Except when they were asking what it was like to watch him die.’ 

Ernst left the funeral early when the boys started talking about how they’d heard your head fell clean off when you hung yourself. He’d asked Hanschen, later, if the talk had gotten much worse, trying to punish himself for taking the cowardly way out; he’d received a blank look and the news that, no, they’d all switched to talking about the essays which were due for school just a few minutes after he ran away. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. 

Hanschen flinches. He didn’t realise just how little he actually wanted to hear that. ‘Don’t,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t fishing for sympathy. It was a cheap tactic to get you to shut up.’ 

‘Well, it worked,’ Ernst mutters. He can’t look at Hanschen, but all of a sudden he can’t stand the view here; it’s so _perfectly_ idyllic, a beautiful children’s illustration of a countryside, all he ever imagined for his future, all he thinks about at night as comfort when the hopelessness of everything sweeps up over him like a wave and threatens to crush him flat

but with every raw nerve of his body in electric attune to the knowledge that Hanschen is sitting beside him and their legs brush against each other if one of them leans slightly to the side, it may as well be as unreachable as Eden. 

Hanschen looks at him sideways. He can’t make out his expression. Hanschen’s inscrutability usually walks the fine line between “hot” and “frustrating asshole and yet, regrettably, still hot”, but now he just wishes to God he knew what the hell was happening in his brain. He wishes Hanschen knew, even. Then maybe he’d show it.

’You _really_ need to lighten up,’ Hanschen says. ‘If I wanted to fight about dead boys I wouldn’t have brought you out to a playground. We would have gone to the graveyard or Hot Topic or something.’ 

‘Okay,’ Ernst says. ‘Sorry.’ 

That’s a defeat, Hanschen thinks. Good. ‘Listen...’ he says, and pauses; he wants to say this right. ‘Out of the three pathways, it’s easy to tell who’s traversing which. But, there’s always the possibility of changing it. And, the thing is, the people you think will care about that actually don’t. You understand?’ 

‘No.’ 

‘Whatever,’ Hanschen says. ‘The point is that “don’t cry over spilt milk” is a pre-existing metaphor, so you don’t get to metaphorshame my usage of it. And its point stands.’

‘What does the milk symbolise?’ Ernst says. ‘The one that I’m not crying over.’

‘Your whole Catholic thing,’ Hanschen says. ‘Grades. The virgin suicide of 2015, and blaming yourself for it. The fact that after that thing with Gabor and Wendla, Anna’s parents aren’t letting you be friends with her anymore. You _let_ it get to you. You don’t have to. It’s better if you don’t.’ 

Hanschen fixes his eyes on him: _listen. Because you’re gonna have a lot of heartache, and I’m gonna be the first._

Ernst says ‘Okay. Sure. Skim the cream off the spilt milk.’ 

‘That’s the worst metaphor I’ve ever heard,’ Hanschen says. 

‘Only because you weren’t in philosophy club with Melchior in Year Seven,’ Ernst says, and is relieved to feel only a faint twinge of guilt as laughter opens Hanschen's face again. _He is not your friend anymore,_ he reminds himself. Melchior is another person lost. 

He doesn’t noticed that Hanschen’s laughter has died until he speaks again, in that voice that’s lowered and slow, deliberating. ‘I’m glad that you see my point.’ 

‘Yeah,’ Ernst mumbles. It is easier, he thinks to not fight with Hanschen. It is more rewarding. It makes him like him more. ‘I mean, everyone always says I’m great with, you know, taking life advice.’ 

‘You were always the most attentive listener during motivational speeches,’ Hanschen contemplates. ‘Remember that one time you teared up when the guy with no legs came to school and told us to never give up on our dreams?’ 

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Kind of stupid. I should make my dreams work for _me.’_

Hanschen says ‘Oh my god, Ernst, lighten _up,_ ’ as he reaches in to kiss him.

Ernst’s thoughts reach a frequency of emotion best rendered in writing as: 

**?????????**

followed by: 

**!!!!!!!!!**

He kisses back. 

He doesn’t intend to- he doesn’t think about it, not really- desperately, hungrily. He hasn’t let himself imagine this. Not consciously. 

Then his thoughts converge and return all at once- a blinding rush of oxygen to a drowning man who bursts back above the ocean- and his eyes fly open, and he pulls away, all of him, and Hanschen’s hand falls out of his hair to lay still at his side. 

‘Oh, _God_ ,’ he breathes.The capitalisation was inherent, he speaks the word like it was separate from the rest of his sentence in the manner of a boy raised to worship; it gives the blasphemy weight. Hanschen considers humorously misinterpreting his statement and saying something like _mm, I know,_ but decides that, no, it would be tasteless. Then Ernst says, in exactly the same tone, ‘ _Hanschen_. You-‘

That’s _genuine shock,_ Hanschen realises with a twinge of amusement. He does not feel that he has been particularly subtle at any point. ‘What,’ he says, ‘never been seduced on a playground before?’ 

Ernst puts a hand on his mouth, yanks it away like it’s been burned. ‘I didn’t think- that- that you would-‘

‘You really weren’t following the metaphor, were you,’ Hanschen says. To be honest, he hadn’t really either, but he was pretty sure that blowjobs came into it somewhere. 

‘It _wasn’t very clear!’_

Hanschen rolls his eyes, then. ‘ _Achilles and Patroclus?’_

‘Hanschen, I _failed_ Classical Studies!’ 

‘Oh,’ says Hanschen. ‘Right. Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s a controversial interpretation.’ 

He doesn’t know what to do with Ernst looking at him so unfailingly, his breath so ragged, anxious. They are so close he can feel every exhale. ‘I swore to myself that I would just talk to you and then come home, tonight,’ Ernst says quietly.

‘I waited for you,’ Hanschen says.

‘I swore that I wouldn’t-‘ He swallows, grappling with the strange words that claw and burn at his throat. ‘And I was worried that you never would.’ 

‘So, it’s not all my fault the good Catholic boy is ruined for life.’ He _warned_ him, is the thing. He’s given him all the warning Hanschen thinks he could give.

‘I love you,’ Ernst says, and Hanschen realises his warnings weren't enough. Ernst will wish, later, that he hadn’t said it; saying it has made it true. ‘I mean that. I’ve never- loved anyone before. Not like- I mean _never-_ ‘

’Maybe,’ Hanschen says- Hanschen will wish, later, that he hadn’t said it, something he knew even then was not true- ‘-thirty years from now, we’ll look back on our reckless teenage years and think they were the best times of our lives.’ 

Ernst laughs a little, breathless and dark. ‘The _best?_ What kind of miserable life are you expecting to have?’ 

‘A successful one,’ Hanschen says. Just so he knows the score. ’With my father still willing to call me his son.’ 

‘Yeah,’ Ernst says. ‘I get it.’ 

Hanschen both envies and aches at the raw sadness Ernst allows himself to express; he’s so _open,_ this boy, a beautiful alien to the Robel family’s three approved expressions (“smirk”, “unimpressed” and “unimpressed smirk”). ‘Don’t worry about that,’ he says. ‘Not tonight. There’s nobody else in the world that matters to either of us, right now.’

‘Okay,’ Ernst says. ‘You’re right.’

‘I’m glad,’ Hanschen says, ‘that you finally get it.’ 

And he reaches in to kiss him again. 

Ernst surrenders to the fathomless ocean of thoughtlessness, and the bliss is that everything in the world begins to make sense again. 

Hanschen thinks that they will eventually have to find a less public place than the playground, but that right now is probably not that time. 

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn’t going to write spring awakening fanfiction but i was getting annoyed at some trends which showed up in the few that i read, so this is in part a response to the fandom’s apparent deluge of a) modern AUs in which every problem is magically solved by everyone owning an iphone and b) ernst being characterised as a delicate angel flower who exists to hang on hanschen’s arm and dissolves into tears whenever somebody looks at him the wrong way  
> also... @ hernst shippers.... sorry this wasn’t fluffy.......... it’s my manifesto. and i like messed-up ships.  
> this fic now has a SEQUEL/PREQUEL in the form of "every generation thinks they invented sex"! it's long! there's hernst and also, more characters!! trigger warning for later chapters but if you're into spring awakening i figure you can handle it!!! read it over @ http://archiveofourown.org/works/5586052?view_full_work=true


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